Made up of strung-together stories from Tucker Max’s best-selling book of the same name, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is a painfully unfunny celebration of dim misogyny and unabashed narcissism. Matt Czuchry plays Tucker as he ropes his best friends Dan (Geoff Stults) and Drew (Jesse Bradford) into an impromptu road trip to a “legendary” strip club with a lax touching policy for Dan’s bachelor party. But when Tucker’s selfishness lands Dan in hot water with both his fiancée and the cops, he finds himself "disinvited" to his friend’s wedding and is forced to learn a lesson about friendship -- kind of.

With its insult-based humor and equally unimaginative plotting, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell is exactly the sort of movie critics were born to pan. And Max, who cowrote the script and -- despite a nonexistent film background -- reportedly issued commands to director Bob Gosse and his actors on how to shoot the low-budget film, seems to have intentionally set out to court just such a reaction. But the film’s deliberately offensive dialogue (which ranges from mildly clever wordplay to disturbingly violent invective against women) fails to shock on anything close to the intended level.

By attempting to pass as “comedy,” it offends notions of good humor more than good taste. This is made all the more pathetic by Beer in Hell’s repeated insistence that this anti-social behavior somehow represents “charm.” Of course, it doesn’t help that what constitutes Beer in Hell’s narrative arc is a string of people walking away from Tucker in disbelief until eventually even his friends can no longer stand what an asshole he is.

And with a climax that hinges on a bout of chemically induced diarrhea -- a gag explicitly ripped from the infinitely superior Wedding Crashers -- Beer in Hell is almost as aggressively derivative as it is unfunny.

Seemingly predicated on the belief that deep down every guy just wants to be him, Max’s Beer in Hell doesn’t feature many redeeming qualities for any guy who doesn’t share his belief that all women are either “whores” or “sluts.” This brand of pointless sexism masquerading as masculinity is a seriously tired act, and with a plot built entirely for the purpose of Max’s own self-aggrandizement, it’s hard to understand why Beer in Hell would appeal to anyone not named Tucker Max.

Utterly devoid of any of the laughs of this year’s other bachelor party comedy The Hangover, Beer in Hell is made all the more intolerable by its obvious self-satisfaction, and Czuchry’s unflagging confidence as Tucker merely comes across as pathological. Sure, there’s the requisite nudity of the genre -- along with strippers and sex scenes and excessive drinking -- but somehow none of it manages to be any fun. The cinematic equivalent of drinking alone, Beer in Hell may seem like a good idea on paper, but it only takes a few minutes to realize it’s just kind of sad.